Hey everyone! My name is Protagonist_chris and I’m very "okay" at POE.

I’ve been wanting to make a build-guide over the last few leagues to share some of the experimentation that I tend to try each league. This league has been…sleepy but fun nonetheless as I’ve played around with some new ideas, skills, items, and the revamped ascendancies.

I’ll shamelessly admit that this build is more or less cutedog_’s auto-bomber build, or any other variation of an auto-bomber build you have come across, with the exception this is a Scion hybrid HP/ES version, with a bit of focus on survivability and boss killing rather than the bonkers speed cutedog_ and other streamers have achieved. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still tear through packs at blistering speed, but just about 80% of what you’ve seen on streams.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The build was originally designed to synergize with Headhunter for max clear speed and your ability to kill bosses is very dependent on that stupid, dirty bullshit belt. If the magic find variant of this build is used, you’re going to have a bad time bossing as well, and I highly advise skipping them. However, the primary version I use myself with the weapon swap can handle most bosses up to T10, albeit somewhat dangerously and at the expense of absolute max ludicrous speed.

INCOMPLETE BUILD NOTE: This is still a work in progress. While it is effective at it's purpose survivability is a real issue, and mistakes are heavily punished. I'm actually garbage at playing PoE, so this particularly affects me and the rate at which I can level. I'm super open to any critique, suggestions, or flat out accusations of incompetence.
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-To optimize the build, it requires extreme investment, 5-10ex for mid-range and scaling all the way to 100’s of ex for all the goodies (Bisco’s, headhunter, 21/20’s, insanity gloves, etc)
-Difficult time bossing
-You will die a lot. Not HC viable, at all
-Not a league starter
-Requires some skill to master
-Will literally melt your computer if you don’t have adequate hardware.

The concept behind this build is pretty simple: We dash around the map with shield charge, criting and triggering our herald abilities which are acting as the primary source of our damage and clear speed.

This build is best utilized if you have a large map pool, wish to farm one or two specific maps for currency, already have a headhunter, or want to kill everything super, mega fast (except bosses).
This is a variation on the fairly-popular auto-bomber build that has been around since the addition of the coming calamity chest with 3.0:

This chest buffs the socketed heralds, but also limits all heralds to 45% mana reservation regardless of the support gems linked to it. This is global, not just within the chest itself, which allows us to run Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ice with as many links as we can throw at it in theory, and still be able to reserve both of them at 90% total.

Alternatives: None, really.

This build also benefits immensely from Esh’s Mirror spirit shield:

This item has always been a bit bananas. The added damage it brings to any clear speed build is absurd. You don’t need esh’s mirror, but it is a very enabling for this build and makes it feel like a speed clearing monster.
Alternatives: Any high evasion/armor/es shield with added HP/ES, resists, and any number of useful shaper and elder mobs
Trigger our main skillhem, Glacial Cascade, with Cospri’s

Again, this isn’t actually required to use the build’s core mechanic, you could run GC, or any other skill, honestly, as self-cast and just wait for the heralds to trigger, then proceed as usual. However, this will get tedious and the build wont feel smooth or cohesive whatsoever without Cospris. Highly recommended item.

NOTE: you want the highest attack speed cospri’s, it’s by far the most important stat on the sword to affect the clear speed and smoothness of the build.

Alternatives: I guess a rare with attack speed and good ele damages, perhaps even a brightbeak and a Cast on Crit support gem swapped in instead of controlled destruction. I feel like damage would suffer significantly however.
Offhand weapons:
We take advantage of these two wonderful little wands:

In them, we put the standard Volatile dead/unearth cheese that’s so popular with leveling set ups these days. In theory it could be any skill that is effective in the Poet’s pens. I prefer VD because the orbs will spawn and track enemies, allowing you to hide behind obstacles or kite tougher bosses.
This weapon swap is usually how we deal with most bosses early on, even into higher maps when you get better gear. This is by no means mandatory or necessary, but if you have any desire to kill bosses and you don’t have a 6-link, headhunter, or 21/20 gems, dual pens is your best bet at dealing with them and not dying.

It does take some getting used to, however.

OTHER GEAR:

Spoiler

RINGS

We’re looking for two Diamond rings with Life, Resistances, ES, damage monds (increase lightning dmg, etc)
Alternatively, you could use essence worm for Hatred/Discipline/Haste/Grace or whatever if you have a watcher’s eye or just feel like it.

I also like the unique Opal Ring Stormfire

for some added ignite damage and resists, which always helps with dps.

You could also go for ventor’s gambles with decent rolls if you were going the MF route.

AMULET:

Neck has a bit of debate about it. Either Choir of the Storm, Bisco’s Collar, or a high crit, crit multi, life, res, es necklace.

I personally don’t like bisco’s. It’s too expensive, and it completely gimps your bossing ability without a headhunter. I also don’t really enjoy building specifically for MF, but that’s just not to my taste. If you’re comfortable skipping bosses and just ripping through maps for the monies, you really need a Bisco’s to make it all worth your time.

Choir is a bit expensive (1-2ex, depending) but you really notice the single target assistance from the granted thunderbolt. Plus, it looks cool.

HELM:

I opt for a 6 link shaper/elder mod item for Herald of Ice. This isn't required, but I link the damage increase. You could easily just run a Starkonja's or a Lightpoacher.

Currently I'm using a 2 abyssal jewel Lightpoacher, since I have better access to nicer abyssal jewels at this point in the league. It helps with clear speed tremendously.

BELT:

For belts, you have a few options as well.

Ideally, you’d get a GG stygian vise with a GG jewel for Life, Res, ES, and flask charge reduction or something.

More likely I’d say shoot for Bisco’s Leash for rampage if you have the Res elsewhere, or go for a Crystal belt with high ES and High life rolls, plus whatever Res you need to fill. I was having res problems with my char, so I went this route. In reality I think you could probably go literally any belt in the game that got you what you needed.

BOOTS:

Some people like Goldwyrm, and they work perfectly fine for the MF version of the build.

I personally prefer just high Movement speed (30-35%) ES boots with Life and tri-res.
Though really, whatever you want works here.

GLOVES:

While essence of insanity gloves add an immense quality of life and smoothness to this build, they are by no means required.
And life, res, es, attack speed gloves work well here.

However to make shield charge significantly faster, you’ll want to either find Insanity gloves on the market or make your own. Mine are garbage, but I made them and I’m poor so but I gotta go fast.

JEWELS:

Pure Talent – Because we are scion and to touch 4 total starting nodes, this jewel gives us a huge value. We gain Crit, mana regen, ele dmg pen, etc, etc.
Generally you want to look for jewels that have %inc Life or flat life, %inc ES or ES recovery, And res you need to fill, Crit, Crit multi for spells/elemental skills/lightning damage etc. There are a ton of options, and these can get quite expensive, but you should be able to find suitable jewels for relatively cheap.

Inspired Learning - If you want the poorman's HH feel, this jewel is fairly cheap (15-25c) and fits into our build nicely.

Watcher’s Eye:
This falls under the “very not budget” option, but there are a slew of watcher’s eyes that are bonkers good with this build, especially the base crit hatred jewels. These however need to be work along with an essence worm for the aura itself. The upside is base crit increase for your heralds, with are very difficult to scale crit for. These are never cheap, and are very hard to come by.

FLASKS:

Stibnite adds an amazing amount of survivability
I run with a Life flask, because we are very squish
I run with a Surgeon’s Quicksilver of Adrenaline, which is lovely for sustained added movement speed. Perpetual would be good here as well.
We also like Diamond flasks to start things off when diving into packs
And Finally I run the Atziri’s because it adds a really significant amount of damage during it’s duration.
You could use a Wise Oak if you had your resistances in order, if you were much better at the game than me, you could pop in a silver flask, or a jade flask instead of the life flask as well. Really up to you.

I should note, that I took what seemed like the best options for survivability AND damage, so please feel free to make other decisions where you need more of either. Also open to any suggestions on modifying my tree!

I'll address this later, as I'm not convinced what I'm working with is optimal. But I would recommend buying level 1, 20% quality gems early, or using the vendor recipe on level 20, 0% quality gems. This will help save you some monies.

At it's core, you only need Cospri's, 5L Calamity, and esh's mirror to get the ball rolling with this build and for it to feel smooth compared to other gear alternatives I listed in the build.

with that in mind and depending on your luck that's around 1ex worth of gear. I would however recommend you use as many 20/20 gems as you can get your hands on, as that makes a huge difference, especially early on.

Also, if you're going to be farming a lower tier map with more of a budget you may want to consider going MF as well (Goldwyrm, 1 or 2 Ventors, Saidama's touch, Bisco's Leash belt, etc).

Playing this build and it's going well. About 30% crit chance at full power charges seems a little low, but it's apparently all I can manage with 6 charges, an ice golem, and two maxed diamond rings... but with a diamond flask it goes alright. Runs tier 6 and 7 maps smoothly on a five-link. Next goal will be a six-link Coming Calamity and some insanity gloves.

Watching a whole screen of monsters around a shrine evaporate is really fucking satisfying.

As previously stated I have two 30% implicit diamond rings, each with crafted crit chance (15% and 14%), an ice golem, 75% capped lightning resist for Choir of the Storm, and now I've even started running The Tactician instead of Bisco's Leash to try and squeak out every bit of crit chance I can get my hands on... and my Herald of Thunder, with six power charges, maxes out at just shy of 32% crit chance.

Has anyone running this build managed to get higher than that? And if so, how? It's the one thing holding this build back for me. I find it runs absolutely flawlessly the moment I touch a Diamond Shrine, so crit chance seems to be the weak link. Obviously it's difficult since spell crit does nothing for the heralds.

My biggest frustration with this build was that it just wasn't operating consistently. I figured out pretty quickly that this was because its crit chance was just too low. The moment I touched a Diamond Shrine, it went off flawlessly. But even with a diamond flask up, the absolute highest I could get the effective crit chance in combat (6 power charges, ice golem, aforementioned rings, flask, etc) was around 45% lucky.

I just went to the trouble over the last couple days of leveling a Shadow to try this build again with an Assassin.

Already at level 70 it consistently beastmodes tier 7 and 8 maps no issue. Goes off consistently. The Assassin's ascendancies are just too good.